Note 22 — Chapter V · THE ASCENSION.

Commentators have, it is true, taken all possible pains to explain the want of a narrative of the ascension in the first and fourth gospels, in a way which may not prove inimical either to the authority of the writings, or to the historical value of the fact. They maintain that the Evangelists who are silent on the subject, held it either unnecessary, or impossible, to narrate the ascension. They held it unnecessary, say these expositors, either intrinsically, from the minor importance of the event;22 or extrinsically, on the consideration that it was generally known as a part of the evangelical tradition;23 John in particular supposed it to be known from Mark and Luke;24 or lastly, both Matthew and John omitted it as not belonging to the earthly life of Jesus, to the description of which their writings were exclusively devoted.25 But we must contend, on the contrary, that the life of Jesus, especially that enigmatical life which he led after his return from the grave, absolutely required such a close as the ascension. Whether it were generally known or not, whether it were important or unimportant,—the simple æsthetic interest which dictates even to an uncultivated author, that a narrative should be wound up with a conclusion, must have led every evangelical writer who knew of the ascension to mention it, though it were but summarily at the end of his history, in order to avoid the strange impression left by the first gospel and still more by the fourth, as narratives losing themselves in vague obscurity. Hence our apologists resort to the supposition that the first and fourth Evangelists held it impossible to give an account of the ascension of Jesus, because the eyewitnesses, however long they might gaze after him, could still only see him hovering in the air and encircled by the cloud, not entering heaven and taking his place on the right hand of God.26 But in the ideas of the ancient world, to which heaven was nearer than to us, an entrance into the clouds was in itself a real ascent into heaven, as we see from the stories of Romulus and Elijah.